Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a co-victim of masculinist social assumptions. We see feminist critique as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened when this control has not been utilized. Narratives of fertilization and sex determination traditionally have been modeled on the cultural patterns of male/female interaction, leading to gender associations being placed on cells and their components. (...) We also find that when gender biases are controlled, new perceptions of these intracellular and extracellular relationships emerge. (shrink)

This paper provides analyses of the effect of corruption in South Asia on credit access for small- and medium-size enterprises, and credit constraints faced by female-owned and male-owned SMEs. By addressing potential endogeneity and reverse causality of corruption and credit constraints via instrumental variables, this study reports that corruption has a detrimental effect on credit access. Specifically, corruption increases the probability of SMEs credit constraints by 7.63%. However, gender differences emerge, indicating that bribery is slightly more effective when used (...) by female SME owners. When male-owned SMEs pay bribes, they are on average 0.61% more credit-constrained than their counterparts. For female-owned SMEs paying bribes, they are on average 0.78% more likely to be less credit-constrained compared to female SME owners who do not pay bribes. Overall, bribery is not very effective in achieving the desired outcome and attitudes towards bribery as unethical may be more a question of culture than of gender. (shrink)

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Critiques of Western feminists’ attempts to extend claims about gender injustice to the global context highlighted a dilemma facing Western feminists, what I call the global gender justice dilemma. In response to this dilemma, Alison M. Jaggar argues that Western feminists should turn our attention away from trying to resolve it and, instead, toward examination of our own complicity in the processes that produce injustice. I suggest that this kind of approach is helpful in responding to an additional (...) dilemma that confronts the Western feminist, namely the epistemic dilemma. Western feminists can speak for women of the global South and run the risk of distorting those women’s experience and further silencing their voices, or we can refuse to speak and abdicate our responsibilities to address injustice. I argue that we should address this dilemma not by trying to resolve it but by examining our role in the reproduction of epistemically unjust practices. To explain this response, I offer a preliminary account of epistemic injustice as epistemic oppression. I conclude by claiming that our own epistemic complicity in epistemically oppressive social practices is a weighty reason for us to work to transform those practices. (shrink)

Amy Allen’s insightful and nuanced feminist critical-theoretical account of the politics of our selves could be strengthened with a more complex and differentiated account of power and of gender, and of the social as a site of multiple conflicting and contesting relations. Such an account would adhere more consistently to Allen’s own project of understanding subjects to be constituted through both relations of power and relations of interdependence and mutuality, care and solidarity. The development of this account, and of (...) a situated account of desire or motivation, is essential for a feminist critical theory of self and social transformation. (shrink)

Some feminist gender sceptics hold that the conditions for satisfying the concept woman cannot be discerned. This has been taken to suggest that (i) the efforts to fix feminism’s scope are undermined because of confusion about the extension of the term ‘woman’, and (ii) this confusion suggests that feminism cannot be organised around women because it is unclear who satisfies woman. Further, this supposedly threatens the effectiveness of feminist politics: feminist goals are said to become unachievable, if feminist politics (...) lacks a clear subject matter. In this paper, I argue that such serious consequences do not follow from the gender sceptic position. (shrink)

This article addresses the notions of gender performativity and temporality in Butler’s early work on gender. The paper is articulated in four steps. First it gives an account of the role and nature of temporality in Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Second, it shows some similarities and connections between the role played by temporality in Butler’s theory of gender performativity and its role in Marx’s analysis of capital. Third, it raises some criticisms of Butler’s understanding of (...) temporality and historicity, focusing in particular on the lack of historicisation of her own categories in bothGender TroubleandBodies that Matter. This deficit is a consequence of the epistemological framework within which she is operating, in particular of her understanding of social practices and relations through the lens of linguistic concepts extrapolated from their theoretical context. The article concludes by referring to Floyd’s and Hennessy’s analyses of the formation of sexual identities as examples of the fruitful historicisation of gender performativity, which also sheds some light on the ‘the abstract character’ of the temporality of gender performativity. (shrink)

This article examines Swedish migrant women to the United States. It asks how racially privileged European migrants adapt to US racial and gender hierarchies that require them to relinquish their economic security and gender autonomy in a neoliberal state? Drawing upon interviews and focus group discussions with 33 Swedish women and three of their spouses, and participant observation between 2006 and 2008 in a network for Swedish speaking women living in the US, the article discusses how a group (...) of ‘white’ migrant women who arrive in the US with an ideology of gender egalitarianism negotiate a more socially conservative and economically vulnerable lifestyle, as the wives of upper-middle-class men. The article argues that while Swedish women benefit from their racial and social privileges in the US they lose their sense of economic security, acquiring new anxieties that make them reluctant to renounce their Swedish citizenship which they conceive of as a ‘flexible’ resource. (shrink)

This article draws on the results of a qualitative, exploratory study of 20 Australian women business owners to demonstrate how using a ‹gender as social identity’ lens provides new insights into the influence of gender on exporting and entrepreneurial behaviour. Interview data reveal perceptions of gender identity and gender relations varied and influenced the interpretations which women business owners placed on their exporting activities. Women in the study used different terms to describe exporter and entrepreneurial characteristics (...) to those found in extant literature. A strong theme was exporting as a life-changing experience that allowed the women to grow personally as well as grow the business and succeed as exporters. (shrink)

A brief background essay is followed by an annotated bibliography of documents referring to differences between the treatment of women and men in the health care setting and the omission or underrepresentation of women in clinical research. Government reports, association statements, books and journal articles are included.

Eastern Orthodox theology affirms the liturgy as an anticipatory icon of God's reign that establishes a pattern of relationships by which Christians are called to live in and for the world. Taking at face value an Orthodox theological claim that the liturgy is the sole source for deriving ethical actions, Orthodox theologians typically address the question of female priesthood within the existing visual parameters of the liturgy in which men exercise authority. Given patterns addressed by both aspects of ritual theory (...) and contemporary anthropology, the articulation of anthropologies that likewise limit the authority and capability of women is to be expected. However, these defenses of the exclusion of women from full participation in the liturgy, including sacramental ordination, are the result of a reductionistic view of the priesthood, the liturgy, and human persons. Neither Orthodox personalism, nor its ethical implications, nor a few rarely glimpsed snippets of the Orthodox tradition support such reductionism. Rather, recognition of the unique capabilities of women by the community and their welcome participation within the community encourages the joy that underlies the transformation of a people who live for the life of the world. (shrink)

In this article I analyse prominent textbooks, encyclopedias and journals in the field of women’s and gender studies and ask where the authors and concepts presented in these texts and sites of publication come from in terms of geographic location. This is inspired by the question: to what extent can gender studies be described as a ‘multi-centered’ field (Connell, 2011) and can gender studies take into account feminist concepts of knowledge production which favour the involvement of the (...) greatest possible diversity of authors (Longino, 1990; Harding, 1991)? The analyses presented here show that being located at a North American or Western European institution still seems to be a crucial factor in authors being published and referred to – both in Western academic centres and in other regions. It seems that there is still a long way to go before various local gender studies communities can communicate on a more egalitarian footing. (shrink)